The Canadian Caper in Tehran - 8 February 1980

The United States has found a new hero. Before I reveal the identity of this surprise Oscar winner, I ought to remind myself of the fickleness of hero worship among nations, as well as schoolgirls. Or should I say, school persons.

In my boyhood, Britain was so lordly, so plainly top dog of the world, that it didn’t need to chose heroes among the international community, countries clamoured to be liked or helped by Great Britain. But when I first came to the United States, I was surprised to discover a whole roster, or pecking order, of heroes and villains.

France, was the number one hero for reasons that puzzled me until I learnt about the undying hero worship paid to a man I'd never heard of, a man, who had been dead for 100 years or more, namely the Marquis de Lafayette, who at the age of 19 volunteered to fight with the revolutionary army against George III's men, and was made a general by George Washington.

But the favourite little hero in those days was Armenia, because it was starving. Mothers used to scold little boys for not eating their spinach, and hoped to shame them by saying, "Just think of the starving Armenians".

At the beginning of the Second World War, America found another nation hero in Finland. Brave little Finland became almost an idiom. It was a tribute to the Finns, putting up such a plucky stand against the Russians.This feeling of admiration was so strong, even among unsentimental people, that it even extended to an extraordinarily gifted and phlegmatic Yorkshireman that I knew.

And I seize the opportunity to mention his name here, since he is by now wholly forgotten even in Washington – a city which ought to honour him some time because he turned the Washington Post from a provincial newspaper that happened to be published in the capital city, into a national paper carrying great weight in what the Soviets liked to call "America’s ruling circles".

His name was Herbert Elliston. He was the editor of the paper. And he was so moved by the spunk of the Finns in standing up to the Russian invasion that he begged for, and got, leave of absence, and in his 50s, this warm and lumbering man, who never took a minute's exercise in his life, fitted himself out with snow boots, parkas and the like, and went off to watch the Finns' heroism at first hand.

He was there, I don’t know how long, but long enough to do a fine short book and his publishers got it out in record time. It was called "Finland Fights On". Alas, for impulsive hero worship, it was published the day that Finland surrendered. The book died in the moment of its birth, for nations are no more loyal than sports fans. Stars like Chris Lloyd, George Best, Jack Nicklaus can barely keep their mind on the game for the din of acclamation, the sustained hallelujah chorus that goes on as long as they are winning, but let them fumble for a week or two and then the fans look round for another demi-god.

Well, the new American hero is Canada, and the spark that set off this blaze of admiration was baldly announced on the last day of January in this dispatch. Miss Flora MacDonald, Canada’s external affairs minister said yesterday that the Canadian embassy in Tehran gave six United States diplomats shelter for 12 weeks, furnished them with Canadian passports and flew them out of Iran on regular flights to a United States base in West Germany last weekend. She said the covert operation was a reason for Canada’s temporary closure of its embassy in Tehran after the Americans and the last four Canadian staff had left Iran.

Well, at once a state department spokesman expressed the United States’ deep appreciation to the government of Canada. President Carter came up with his own tribute to America’s splendid neighbour. People appeared outside the White House with placards, ranging from Gung-ho Canada to God bless Canada. And, to complete the circle of love and admiration, our television news programmes for several nights dutifully hopped to Ottawa, and had street interviews with Canadians who said they were proud and happy to be of help to their old and closest pal. It was a warm moment in a cold time.

The relations between the United States and Canada or, rather, the seeming non-relationship is something that doesn’t dawn on you until you have lived in the United States for quite some time. They take each other so much for granted, it’s as if they were floor neighbours in a high-rise apartment house, where you regularly visit a friend, and one evening you get to talking about somebody in the news, even a famous person, and you say, "I wonder where he is now?" and your friend says, "He lives across the hall on this floor".

I suppose when I came here I expected Canadian news to be in the American papers every other day, the way Scottish news is in the English papers. So I did a little boning up on Canadian history, the way, when you go to Hampton Court, you do a little boning up on Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey.

I found, however, that Americans know next to nothing about Canadian history. They know about the Americans who went west, Daniel Boone and Lewis and Clark but they know almost nothing about the roving French Canadians who had beaten out the trail through the far west which the Gold Rushers then followed.

More than any other national group on this continent, the French Canadian pioneers are the most totally ignored in the teaching of American history. Such a giant as Champlain, who invented the fur trades of the western valleys and the roaming traders of the plains, and who extended French influence to the Rockies one way, and the Gulf of Mexico another? Champlain is the name of a lake. And the dramatic figure of La Salle, who tracked the whole Mississippi river, and found its outlet at New Orleans? La Salle, to the vast majority of Americans, is the name of a car.

This being so, you’d naturally expect that the traffic in ignorance would be two-way, but it’s not so. While Americans know next to nothing about Canadian politics – I shouldn't care to see the results of an American poll asking what form of government the Canadians lived under – what surprises me time and time again is how knowledgeable Canadians are about American politics. They follow the presidential race, the primaries, the conventions and the rest, as tensely as they follow the ice hockey games.

Of course, you can say – and rightly – that since the United States is the giant and that Canada lives between his huge legs, Canada had better know what it going on before the border. You can make the analogy with Sweden, a little country wedged in between two monoliths, whose citizens, if they want to prosper in the world about them, had better learn English, not to mention German and French, which they do, from the age of four, just as Canadians talk American.

Yet there is a kind of compliment in this – the ease, the amiability of United States-Canadian relations is so much assumed as a fact of life and genders so little anxiety that you don’t have to give it a thought. When the world started going to pot or to Hitler in the 1930s, and many nations were fortifying their borders, Franklin Roosevelt used to make a sort of ritual announcement once or twice a year. He used to contrast the jumpiness of Europe – the fears of invasion – with the happy state of affairs between the United States and Canada, the only two great countries, he liked to say, which enjoy an undefended frontier.

If there was any American whoever feared a repeat performance of the 18th-century invasions from Canada, I never heard of him. Now, there are, of course, Americans who know Canada, but as a tourist resort, as Lancashire men now know the Costa Brava. But even here the knowledge, even the geographical knowledge, of American first visitors is hazy.

I remember a piece written long ago by the funny and encourageable American journalist Westbrook Pegler. His mother was actually a Canadian but he didn’t seem to have up there often, and when he chose once to escape from the stew and inferno of summer in New York, he took off on a fishing trip to Canada.

He was honest enough to admit that he, or his companions, caught some fat trout, but he was almost outraged that nobody had told him it was hot and humid up there too. "And the mosquitoes," he bellowed, "the mosquitoes are as large as B19s and have fangs".

Among Britons, I find one overriding myth, or preconception, which is not true. It is that Canadians are the automatic explainers of Britain to America and America to Britain. Well since most Canadians by now know a great deal less about Britain that they do about America, that simply doesn’t work.

I remember that great North American Lester Pearson, he used to crab in private about the expectations of British diplomats that he was there to interpret London’s view to the Americans. "Sometimes," he used to sigh, "I go with the British view and sometimes I go with the American view, but most of the time, I am, damn it, representing the Canadian view."

Well, it would be cheery to think that the Canadian sheltering of the American diplomats and then helping them out of Iran would lead to a little more active mutual interest. But as it is, I don’t think the audacity, not to mention the courage of the Canadians will be forgotten for some time.

I have just time to say a word about the death of a great man – about the incomparable, the wonderful, lunacy of Jimmy Durante. Who, as Benny Green has finally said, filtered everything through the asylum of his mind.

I had the honour to be mentioned once by Durante in the annual television award ceremony. I was up for the MC award, Durante was the master of ceremonies. He called off the names of the nominees and then said, "The envelope" and he tore it open, and shouted,"and the winner in New York is Alistair Cookie". "Cook," muttered his assistant. "It says Cookie here," he said.

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